Wynonna Judd has a half-sister, actor Ashley Judd, but it turns out she also has a half-brother. After learning about her biological father’s son, the singer recently called him up to meet — at least over the telephone.
Wynonna Judd was born Christina Claire Ciminella, and for years she thought her father was Michael Charles Ciminella, the biological father of her sister Ashley (birth name: Ashley Tyler Ciminella). However, Judd tells Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM show, she learned in the early 1990s that her father was actually a man named Charles Jordan, the boyfriend of Judd’s mother, Naomi Judd, who left after Naomi became pregnant with Wynonna.
“I found out about all of this … when I was pregnant with Elijah [Judd, my son, who was born in 1994],” Judd explains of learning of her biological father’s existence. “I was 30 years old and I found out, you know, part of my life that I thought, you know, this man who was my biological father is not. And it’s Ashley’s father …”
More than 15 years later, Judd now knows more of her family’s story: Jordan also fathered a son with a different woman. His name is Michael, she says, and he is 53 years old and lives in Kentucky. Judd, also a Kentucky native, is now 56, making the half-siblings about three years apart.
Judd tells Cohen that she met Michael “yesterday,” in an interview that aired on Wednesday (Oct. 28). “I called him on his birthday and I said, ‘Hi’ … and I have the recording, Andy, of me saying, ‘Hi, uh, this is your sister,'” she recounts.
Judd does not share how she learned of Michael’s existence, how he reacted to her phone call, or if the two made plans to speak further or meet up.
The country star never met her biological father. In a 2005 interview with Larry King, she explains that she had planned to meet him about a month before he died in 2000, but never got the chance.
Naomi Judd and Michael Ciminella divorced in 1972, leaving Naomi as a single mother to Wynonna and Ashley. She married her current husband, Larry Strickland, in 1989.
See the Judds Through the Years: